


Ten Little Soldier Boys

by shadesfalcon



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dark, F/M, I Made Myself Cry, I have become an existential crisis, M/M, Mortality, POV Steve Rogers, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers Feels, Suicide, and no i'm not sorry for this, i'm actually proud of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 12:38:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6239659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadesfalcon/pseuds/shadesfalcon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When words like “friends” and “lovers” are spoken in the same sentences as words like “indestructible” and “immortal,” then the human system of death and life means some people will be lost, while others will find themselves stretched out across centuries. Still, even when playing in the realms of the gods, everyone dies eventually, and time inescapably distorts the heroic fight for survival into a fight over who will have to suffer the pain of being the last team member standing.</p><p>Based on and inspired by the children's rhyme, "Ten Little Soldier Boys," as made popular by Agatha Christie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten Little Soldier Boys

 

 

> "Ten little soldier boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine.
> 
>  Nine little soldier boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there was eight.
> 
>  Eight little soldier boys traveling in Devon; One said he’d stay there and then there were seven.
> 
>  Seven little soldier boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in halves and then there were six.
> 
>  Six little soldier boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five.
> 
>  Five little soldier boys going in for law; One got in Chancery and then there were four.
> 
>  Four little soldier boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.
> 
>  Three little soldier boys going to the zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two.
> 
>  Two little soldier boys playing with a gun; One shot the other and then there was one.
> 
>  One little soldier boy left all alone; He went and hanged himself and then there were none."

 

 

 

 

“I hate these things,” Clint stage-whispers to Steve, and Steve can’t help the small smile that creeps up on him in response.

“You get used to them,” is all he says back.

Clint might be willing to be overheard criticizing the gala – and everything it stands for – but Steve isn’t. Clint has been cultivating a penchant for eccentricity ever since the Avengers were dragged into public eye five years ago. Steve, in contrast, is still Captain America. He can’t afford the public outrage that would follow any insult to their benefactors.

“I don’t believe that for one second,” Clint scoffs, catching Natasha’s eye and beckoning her over with nothing more than a slight change in facial expression. “I was a carnie, remember? If I’m not used to eyes on me by now, it’s probably not going to happen.”

Steve has watched the silent across-the-room exchange between Clint and his lover, and he feels the familiar rise of jealousy. He ignores it, giving up little more than a thin press of lips. Bucky and he are working on it. He should be busy being grateful for the resurrection of the dead, not mourning the lost potential for miracles.

Natasha extricates herself from whatever conversation she’s been having with…is that the President? Yeah, it’s the President, and she’s ditching him to come at Clint’s call. Amazing.

And he doesn’t even blame Clint. Watching Natasha walk toward them is something else. The white dress draped across her doesn’t really have a neckline. It’s more a waistline that curves up just enough to cover particular parts of her anatomy. Steve ducks his head, while Clint watches the entire walk with reckless glee.

“Boys,” Natasha greets dryly. “Can you at least _pretend_ to be civilized?” Then, to Clint, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he answers cheekily. “I just love to watch you come.”

Steve half-laughs, more in surprise than anything else, but Natasha’s smile grows and transforms into a predatory advance.

“Sir?” a waiter interrupts. “Champagne?”

Steve welcomes the distraction from the fraternization going on beside him. He also accepts the champagne, having learned a long time ago that trying to explain his body’s implacability regarding alcohol is only unwelcome and confusing.

In an attempt to prolong returning to the inevitably risqué conversation now occurring behind him, Steve scans the room for Bucky. This isn’t his first time at a public event since joining the team, but it’s the biggest yet, and Bucky had been on edge about it, making Steve on edge, as well. Steve’s concerns are unfounded, though, because Bucky is in the thick of a six person conversation and clearly holding his own. Still, at the sensation of Steve’s eyes on him, he glances up and smiles slightly, inclining his head and almost-raising his own untouched glass of champagne.

Okay, so they’re not at Clint and Natasha levels of wordless communication, but they’re working on it.

Steve gives up and turns back to Clint and Natasha. Clint, predictably, looks debauched, although there’s no way Natasha has laid a physical hand on him. Natasha, as ever, looks in control and amused.

“What did I miss?” Steve asks.

Clint snags Steve’s champagne, and Steve lets it go without complaint. If Clint hadn’t started this whole thing, he’d feel bad for the guy. Clint drains the entire glass, and hands the empty container back to Steve.

“Not that this hasn’t been fun,” Natasha says, “but I have work to do.”

And just like that, she’s gone. Gliding away while Clint watches her ass. She knows he’s watching. Everyone knows he’s watching.

“Subtle,” Steve says, unnecessarily.

“Suck my dick, Rogers,” Clint shoots back, but he’s grinning. His voice is also a little hoarse. Natasha must have done quite a number on him. Steve kind of wishes he’d been paying attention.

Then again, he isn’t sure he envies Clint’s attempts to surreptitiously hold his hands in front of himself.

“She sure fights dirty,” Steve comments.

“I started it,” Clint admits. He blinks once, and tilts his head to the side. Blinks again. His eyes are dilated to the point that Steve actually thinks the bright lights of the room might be causing pain. Especially for Clint’s eyes.

Clint coughs a couple time, clears his throat, and coughs again. Which is…bizarre. Arousal is one thing, but this is another. This isn’t the effect of whatever words Natasha had whispered in Clint’s ear. This is…

“You okay?” Steve asks. He can see that one of the nearest Senators is heading their way, and his attention splits for a moment, divided between Captain America–National Icon and Captain America–Teammate and Friend.

“Teammate” wins out when Clint leans over and starts to gag, spitting onto the floor.

Later, someone tells Steve that that gala had turned to chaos within the space of a drawn breath. Steve wouldn’t remember either way.

He would remember Clint’s knees buckling, his mouth still spitting white foam. He would remember the flash of red hair. He would remember Natasha’s hand on Clint neck, trying to tilt his head, having no effect on the seizing muscles. He would remember looking at the empty champagne glass in his hand – Clint’s fingerprints visible in opacity. He would remember scanning the room, slipping into a soldier’s mindset a half-second behind Bucky, who was already in pursuit of some suspect.

When he sees Bucky run out, Steve thinks about following, but he hears a choked noise and looks down in reflex. Once he’s looked down, there’s no way he’s leaving. Clint doesn’t need him anymore, that much is obvious in the dulled blue eyes, but Natasha does.

When he puts his hand on her shoulder, she doesn’t stop the chest compressions, but he can tell from the set of her jaw that she already knows.

 

 

 

“He’d gotten too used to safety,” Natasha says blandly. Everything she says is bland, these days. The only moment they’ve seen an emotion in her eyes over the last week is when the man Bucky had chased down had finally cracked and given away the name Natasha was after.

They all lie to Fury, when he asks them if they caught anyone. He doesn’t believe them, but he also doesn’t push it. Natasha is probably who he’d put on the case anyway, and she really doesn’t need any exterior motivation.

No one mentions that it was Steve’s glass Clint drank from. Natasha is the only one who knows, and Steve expects she’ll keep that to herself. He expects she’ll hold all her cards close to her chest. He expects she’ll turn vicious at the death of her lover, a counterpoint to the way Steve had turned complacent in that plummeting plane.

He does not expect that she will disappear. Yet, inexplicably, they all wake one morning to no Natasha in the Tower.

For a few months, they get word of her. Not from her. _Of_ her. She’s writing her grief in blood across the world. That single name their captive had given her – his last words – had opened a door that Natasha had walked through with poise and poison.

Steve realizes he’d never read her file from before SHIELD. It had seemed invasive. But he understands her epithet now.

Thor is taking it hardest. Or, maybe Tony is taking it hardest, but Thor is the one better at letting his grief show. Either way, Steve isn’t sure what to do about it.

“Why won’t she let us help avenge him?” Thor asks him quietly. “That is what we do.”

“I wish I knew the answer to that,” Steve says. It’s night, and the stars are drowned out by the lights of the city beneath them.

“I will miss her,” Thor says.

It’s then that Steve realizes Thor isn’t mourning Clint. He’s mourning Clint and Natasha together, considering them both lost and beyond him. Steve opens his mouth to object – to promise and swear and argue – but closes it with the finality that comes with a truth long ago accepted.

Bucky knows it, too. He probably had it in conscious thought before Steve did, but then he also knows Natasha better. He knows how she thinks, and how she was trained, and how the skin of her hip felt underneath his hand before it was marked with the twisted scar tissue.

Steve supposes it is a victory that Bucky hadn’t been able to shoot him without remembering him, as he had shot Natasha without any such hesitation.

Maybe. It’s not like they willingly talk about those days, and now it’s too late.

“Come to bed?” he asks Bucky, who is balanced on the windowsill and looking out at the same view Steve had been watching with Thor.

“Later,” Bucky says.

They mourn separately.

In the morning, when Steve comes downstairs, Pepper is in the kitchen and Tony is making her pancakes. Steve settles himself on the barstool next to her.

“How’s he doing?” he asks Pepper.

“I’m right here!” Tony snaps in annoyance from the stovetop. “And I’m doing just fine. Do you want pancakes, too?”

“I’d love some pancakes,” Steve says.

“Then make them your damn self. These are for my lady friend.”

“Tony,” Pepper says, but the simultaneous amusement-and-warning in her voice is more habit than actual emotion. She looks tired, and those are the same clothes she was wearing when she arrived last night. They’re disheveled and unkempt. That is, perhaps, the most alarming part of it all. The missing piece of Pepper’s immaculate competence. It tells Steve that the dishevelment doesn’t stem from sex and sweat, but from tears and hands clutched tightly in fabric.

Steve doesn’t miss the way Tony’s fingers linger on Pepper’s wrist when he gives her the plate of pancakes. Like a lifeline.

“Natasha’s not coming back. Is she?” Tony asks, looking down at the counter.

“No,” Bruce says from the doorway. Steve hadn’t heard him come in.

It’s good though. That they all know. That they all understand.

Still, when they get her body back for the funeral – after she has run out of vengeance to wreak – he wonders if any of them knew Natasha would take it this far. He’s a little surprised by the choice of pills – he’d thought Natasha was the type to use a gun – but he sees the photographs of her lips marred by retched-up white foam and closes his eyes against the parallel.

 

 

 

Thor is a surprise. In fact, it’s such a surprise that the emotion edges toward betrayal. Jane, who had kept Bucky up for so many late nights with talk of physics and bridges and truths too small for the human eye to see, is tucked into him under his arm.

Steve had always thought it was sweet, how protective Thor was of her, when she was so clearly capable of taking care of herself. Now it’s just foreboding. It’s one thing to joke that the fiery scientist doesn’t need any protection, it’s another to remember Clint’s dead eyes and Natasha’s sudden emptiness.

“You’re leaving?” Tony asks. “For how long?” Pepper is in Prague for the next three days and Steve suspects that Tony will be wrapping himself in his suit and flying to join her as soon as this conversation is over.

Sam is here today, along with Bruce and Bucky. Sam and Bruce are on the couch, while Bucky is standing in the back doorway. Sniper’s position at Steve’s six.

“We will…not be returning,” Thor says slowly. “Not for a long while. Not, perhaps, till the end of the ages.”

Jane folds her lips into her mouth, biting at them, but she stays silent. Her fingers twitch where she’s holding onto Thor’s arm, and it’s obvious in that movement how this conversation has already happened between them. How there were likely screamed words and hushed confessions. Jane, impulsive as she can be, is too clever to be blind to what this means for everyone involved. Abandonment so close on the heels of two deaths.

If Jane is agreeing to this decision now, of all times, then there are good reasons why.

“And why the fuck not?” Tony exclaims. “Where the hell do you get off, just deciding something like that? No team meeting?” He turns to Steve. “Come on, Captain! You don’t have anything to say here?”

“It’s time for me to claim my responsibilities,” Thor tries to placate, also turning his gaze on Steve.

It’s the look of a king.

“We wish you both all the best,” Steve tells him. “Godspeed.”

“May you reign wisely and with open eyes,” Bruce adds quietly.

Tony opens and closes his mouth, then he turns on his heel and storms from the room. He’ll regret that later, Steve knows. He’ll regret the lack of a goodbye, when he’s calmed down, but it isn’t Steve’s place to point it out to him.

“Tell them,” Jane says, looking up at Thor. “Tell them why. That’s my condition. You have to tell them why. Right now.”

Thor looks down at her and then back up at Steve.

“I need to be king,” he says simply. “As king, I am afforded certain privileges that I would otherwise not be entitled to. Specifically, the right to consort with my wife in the garden of Idunn.”

Steve knows that one. The garden of Idunn houses the immortal fruits, capable of turning the short span of life into the long languidity that the Asgardians experience. Thor is seeking to turn Jane immortal, before it’s too late, and the price is the immediate enstatement of his kingship.

“I understand,” Steve says. “I’ll…we’ll make sure Tony understands, too.”

“Thank you,” Thor says. And then he and Jane are both gone.

Steve turns back to look at Bucky, who will probably miss Jane more than he’ll miss Thor, by sheer law of time spent together, but he’s already gone. Steve thinks about going after him, but settles on the couch next to Sam instead.

“Long day,” Sam says.

It’s nine in the morning.

“Yep,” Steve answers.

 

 

 

Two years later, Bucky is doing better. Much better, actually. They’re all doing better. The sting of lost friends is still with them all, but that’s the way of war. To die or to be left behind.

Sam has officially become part of the Avengers, but Bruce has taken a back seat. He works with Tony in the lab, and he’s a brilliant force within the shifting political climate threatening them all, but he doesn’t fight anymore. He doesn’t turn.

Steve asks, one day, why not? If there was anything in particular that had led Bruce to that decision.

“Oh,” Bruce says. “The big guy just really misses Clint. It’s not the same. Not as stable as it was becoming.”

“Oh,” Steve says back. “I didn’t realize.”

“Not your fault, Captain. I’m a grown up. I understand that there are consequences when I chose to keep my thoughts and opinions to myself.”

It is, Steve thinks, a very subtle jab at Steve himself.

He relates the interaction to Bucky, later that night, and Bucky laughs.

“Of course that was about you, punk,” he laughs. “Captain America is all ready and willing to spew speeches about justice and freedom, but Steve Rogers is a closed book, bound tight and locked against intrusion.”

“Bound tight, huh?” Steve laughs. The words don’t sound like an insult. Not when Bucky says them, anyway. He forgives Bucky for a lot of things these days.

“Tight as a tick,” Bucky scoffs.

“You wanna feel?” Steve teases, and Bucky’s breathing changes. “Cause if you wanna feel how tight I am, all you have to do is ask.”

Bucky flips them around with a precision move that reminds Steve of Natasha for one heartbreaking moment. Then Bucky is straddling his hips, and that’s all Steve can think of. They kiss, and it’s long and deep. When Bucky thrusts inside him, Steve closes his eyes and pretends it’s still 1940.

The next morning Tony is vivisected by a sheet of flying vibranium. He throws himself in front of it – saving Bucky’s life – and it rips through him, suit and all.

Bruce does not attend the funeral, and Steve gets reports the next morning of the Hulk, wild and uninhibited, moving through the nearby countryside. There are no human casualties, but there’s a lot of damage.

Everyone else is there, though. Pepper and Rhodes, along with Sam, Bucky, and himself. Sam pulls Rhodes aside, afterward. Steve can’t quite hear them at the distance, despite his enhanced hearing, but he sees Sam’s soft touch on the other soldier’s shoulder. He sees Rhodes’ head dip with the weight of grief that even warriors never learn to shed completely.

He’s distracted from wondering what Sam is saying by Pepper’s approach.

“Ma’am,” he greets. Force of habit, though he’s said her name more often than he’s spoken to her like that. It’s just how you behave at funerals.

“Steven,” she greets back. “How are you?”

Her eyes are dry and calm, but Steve knows better than to think that means anything. He knows that “better than you” is a true answer to her question.

“I’m getting by,” is all he says.

“As are we all,” Pepper responds. It’s empty words. Rote responses from practiced conversations.

“We always knew you all would be the death of him,” she adds. And that one is genuine. It isn’t spoken with any malice, though. More, with pity. With truth. With grief.

It cuts deeply, all the same.

Later, it occurs to Steve that, with Bruce opting out of the team to focus on politics and science, all that’s left of the Avengers is soldiers.

 

 

 

Sharon falls ill. It starts unraveling her mind, as it had with Peggy. Even though Steve hasn’t had much contact with her – the post-Hydra division of labor within SHIELD has been intense, to say the least – he still feels the weight of it in his stomach when he hears.

He goes to visit her with Sam. Bucky is out of the country on a mission, and promises that he’ll pay his own visit when he returns. Steve doesn’t believe it – Bucky’s hatred of hospitals is still intense and painful – but he appreciates the lie for the support that it is.

Sharon is her forties now, and for a moment she looks as dangerous as the first time Steve had seen her fight. Then she blinks, and something in her eyes changes.

“I know you,” she says, wrapped in flimsy hospital-gown paper.

Sam’s hand on his shoulder helps, and he’s suddenly reminded of Tony’s funeral, years ago now, when he’d watched Sam comfort Rhodes. He remembers that he hasn’t called Pepper in over a year. Then again, she hasn’t called him either.

“I’m Steve Rogers,” he forces himself to say out loud.

He’s done this once already. He doesn’t think he can do it again.

“I’m Sam Wilson,” Sam says, pulling up a chair. It makes a rough noise, as it slides across the tile, but Sam doesn’t seem to mind. It doesn’t unsettle him at all. Thank god for Sam. Thank god for every time he’d listened to Bucky’s nightmare-inducing accounts. Thank god for his reminders that being weak every now and then is only human. Thank god for him sitting there right now and beginning this conversation with Sharon.

When they leave the hospital room, Sam says quietly, “I don’t think that’s dementia.”

It turns out, her doctors don’t think so either.

This isn’t the 1980s anymore, and what had been hidden in the confusion of the mind is now, decades later, better understood. Understood enough to identify the real source of Sharon’s growing confusion and weakness.

A poison, again. Like Clint, only worse. This isn’t a single dose in a champagne class, but rather a slow and methodical process. It turns out, Steve learns, that Sharon hasn’t been well for a long time. She started getting sick just after she started rising through the SHIELD ranks, where she had been fighting injustice with the clear-minded determination of her great-aunt.

Steve is against the exhumation, but he’s not given a choice, and Peggy’s body is found to have traces of the same elements that are ripping Sharon apart. Steve is less concerned by learning Hydra is still within SHIELD than he is by that fact that he hadn’t noticed. He’d visited Peggy every day in that hospital, and he hadn’t noticed.

Fury says Peggy was probably getting in Pierce’s way, all those years ago. That he needed her blinded and had commissioned the poison created and administered.

Steve wonders whose way Sharon had been getting in.

He asks the doctors if the damage to her mind and body will be reversible, and they say no. He asks if they’ll at least be able to save her life. They say maybe.

It’s another way of saying no.

 

 

 

It has been enough time, now, that Steve and Bucky realize they aren’t aging like they should. No one mentions it, but Sam is no longer in the field, instead training the newer recruits. There’s no shortage of them, these days. Mutants are springing up everywhere, and so are the heated opinions. Opinions Steve hasn’t heard since the disaster at the Triskelion – and before that, since World War II – are being passed around again.

“They’re good kids,” Sam says, speaking of his young soldiers. “They’re scared, but they’re not stupid. I think we can get through this.”

“You have more faith in humanity than I do,” Bucky says. In the last few years, he’s taken to coming and going like a cat. Steve’s just happy to see him when he sees him, and he shows that now with a warm smile. Bucky smiles back and comes over to sit down on Steve’s lap.

“We’ve come a long way,” Sam insists. “Look at the progress we’ve made in human and mutant rights.”

“Long way still to go,” Bucky says, but it’s an old argument, and he’s not really focusing. He’s preoccupied with kissing bruises into Steve’s neck. Sam isn’t fazed by the public display. He’s seen it all before.

“No,” he insists, wincing as he leans forward. His back hurts him all the time now. Old injuries. “I’m not letting this go. I think we’re changing. Not just as a nation, but as a species. What are the mutants except a demonstration of that? We’re adapting. We’re different.”

“The old species has to die off first,” Steve says, over Bucky’s shoulder. “Did you see Bruce’s speech yesterday?”

Bruce, who had disappeared from public eye over the last decade, had made a stunning reappearance at a political rally, speaking eloquently as always. His presence, especially once he’d been identified, was not being taken well by the media. They seemed particularly focused on the fact that he hadn’t aged any more than Steve and Bucky had.

“Yeah, I saw. But that’s the media, you know that. Always controlled by the previous power, digging their claws in and trying to stay in charge. I trust the youth.”

“We used to be the youth,” Steve says. “They beat it out of us.”

Bucky makes a little noise that sounds like it might be an angry objection, but then he goes back to his self-appointed task of trying to make bruises more quickly than they’ll heal.

“They tried,” Sam argues back, and that gets a more pleasant noise from Bucky. “And I think they’re going to have a harder time with this batch. The youth of _this_ generation? They’re walking through walls and talking with the stars.”

That gets Bucky to sit up.

“Talking with the stars?” he asks

“Yeah,” Sam grins. “I’ve got an eleven year old who claims she’s talking to the stars. From the tests the Professor has done, we think they’re talking back.”

“Like sentient creatures?” Bucky says, wiggling around in Steve’s lap so he’s facing Sam.

“Like sentient creatures. The girl says they adore the concept of kisses. She says…oh, how did she say it? She says, ‘they wish they could burn each other with lips like we do.’ ”

“She ever mention Asgard?” Bucky asks.

Old wounds, again.

Sam shakes his head. “Nah, man. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“I stick by what I said, though. There’s something changing on this planet. We’re going to do something wonderful.”

Three days later Coulson is sentenced to death in a legal procedure Steve had not know was occurring. In fact, no one knew it was occurring, outside of a select few. The youth in whom Sam was so determined to trust were not made privy to the decision. They were not permitted to weigh in.

Steve supposes he should be grateful that he’s allowed to say goodbye. Bucky and Bruce, who Steve hasn’t seen in years, comes with him. Sam is told that he doesn’t have the clearance.

Coulson is old and thin, but his eyes are still bright and he stands without a wince of pain or hesitation. Whatever else T.A.H.I.T.I. did to him it has at least lengthened his strength.

“Captain,” Coulson greets warmly, with that same respect that Steve never felt like he earned. “How’s life?”

“It’s losing it’s appeal,” Steve answers softly, and is surprised by how true the statement is, when he had intended to speak it facetiously. It earns him a sudden sharp grip on his arm from Bucky. It’s the metal hand, squeezing tightly enough to bruise bone. Maybe even fracture it. Steve doesn’t do anything other than wince.

For his part, all Coulson says is, “It does that.”

Bruce is the most eloquent of them all. He stands next to the bars of the prison cell and speaks his mind, calling on all his practice in front of the cameras and the crowds.

“You are the best of us, Phil,” he says. “Ahead of your time and this age. Thank you for expecting more of us than we knew to expect from ourselves. We know we lived up to what you wanted from us, because you gave us everything we needed to make sure we could. Thank you for the fact that I can wake up unashamed of who I am.”

Steve blinks rapidly to keep the tears from spilling over. Coulson doesn’t bother.

“Thank you, Bruce” he says. “And on that note, can you do one thing for me?”

“Of course,” Bruce says, before Steve can. “Anything.”

“Tell Daisy just that. That she lived up to everything I had hoped for. That she exceeded any and all expectations. That I am in awe of the leader she has become, and that I know she will handle her team with honor and grace.”

“I’ll tell her,” Bruce promises.

They learn later, after that execution, that Coulson had confessed to a number of federal and international crimes, some of which had been true accusations and some of which had not. Those crimes that were not his own were those of his team, a few mutants, Bruce Banner, and Steve Rogers himself. With Coulson’s confession and death, all other accused are freed from investigation.

Sacrifice. Even measure. Riposte.

A lawyer with a nose that has never been broken in his life arrives at their residence to deliver contracts. Bucky, Bruce, and Steve will retire from the superhero life. In return, the respective governments involved will choose to believe Coulson’s confession. They all sign, both because it seems discourteous to dishonor Coulson's sacrifice and because they’ve decided they’re done anyway.

They don’t think to ask about Sam’s name missing from the contracts.

They should have.

 

 

 

Sam is killed by one of his own students less than a week later. It’s a young man, angry and lonely, whom Sam had been working with one-on-one. Still the veteran, struggling with his own losses and horrors, but always making time to counsel new soldiers.

The boy had apparently come running to Sam with a fabricated emergency, and then lured him out of the school to his death.

The whole thing is stupid. Coulson had T.A.H.I.T.I in his body, and a team made of both mutants and humans at his back. Using subterfuge to kill him had made sense. Using it to kill Sam is just petty. He’s not a mutant. He’s an old man. He teaches children what to do when they wake up from nightmares and don’t remember where they are.

The damage to the school is undeniable, though. There’s anger and outrage and distrust. The boy, whose name Steve never learns, is found dead in the woods the next morning.

Without speaking about it, just with silent understanding, Steve and Bucky pack a few belongings and disappear from the world.

 

 

 

Time is measurable only in relativity. Without anything to compare themselves too, neither Steve nor Bucky find any need to mark and tick and check. They spend lazy days in the wilderness, surviving as soldiers separated from their company behind enemy lines.

When technology and mutant abilities get to be too much of a threat, they retreat to an underground SHIELD facility that had been built for a possible apocalypse. The structure is tightly contained and entirely self-sustaining, especially for only two people.

Bruce finds them at one point, since he was in-the-know about the base as much as Steve was. Bruce’s body hasn’t changed any more than Steve’s and Bucky’s have, but his age is in his eyes. Steve wonders if it’s in his, too. It’s certainly in Bucky’s.

Bucky is not doing well, most days.

“Hey, Steve,” Bruce greets. “Bucky.”

“I know you,” Bucky says. It makes Steve’s stomach clench like he’s trying to throw up, but he fights to keep the reaction off his face.

“We might have a problem,” Bruce says, ignoring Bucky. “I need you to fight with me. One more time.”

Steve listens to Bruce’s explanation of the situation. He’s talking about an experiment gone wrong. Gamma radiation. Again. It was the final move of the last band of non-mutants. It was supposed to wipe out every mutant on the earth and in the atmosphere. Except, upon activation, it had killed everyone in a twenty mile radius, humans and mutants alike.

Not that it isn’t doing its job. It’s just doing it more slowly. Poisoning the earth against the only rational inhabitants it has left. Someone has to climb down to ground zero and find a way to turn it off. Someone who is neither human enough to be broken apart by the gamma radiation nor mutant enough to have their DNA ripped open per the device’s purpose.

“They named it The Bear,” Bruce says in a conversational tone. “The device that was supposed to wipe out the world. It’s idiotic. Or ironic, I suppose, depending on your point of view. Given that almost no one left alive has actually seen a bear. It’s just us and a few other mutants that time is having difficulty killing.”

He’s speaking casually, but Steve can tell from the way he’s holding his body that anyone going near that device is unlikely to survive long term. Steve recognizes this for what it is. A way out. An offer. An end.

Steve looks at Bucky.

“I can’t,” he says. “I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

There’s a flash of green in Bruce’s eyes and he takes a step forward to shove at Steve. Bucky is there too quickly, shoving back at Bruce with his flesh and blood arm. The metal one stopped working a long time ago.

Bucky is spitting threats in Russian, and Steve has, by now, learned the language enough to know that Bucky is referring to him as his handler, rather than as his Steve.

This happens sometimes.

Steve doesn’t know if Bruce understands what Bucky is saying or if there just isn’t enough anger left in the man anymore. Either way, Bruce raises his hands in surrender and steps back. Bucky lets him.

“Do you know what year it is?” Bruce asks. And, for a moment, Steve thinks the question is directed at Bucky. An old grounding technique they’d used forever ago. It’s only when the silence stretches on that he realizes Bruce is speaking around Bucky, toward him.

“Um, no,” Steve says. “We don’t really keep track.”

“Guess,” Bruce says.

“I really don’t know.”

“Guess.”

Steve takes a deep breath and guesses, “2100?”

“Closer to 2200.”

“Oh.”

Bruce leaves after that, and they don’t see him again.

 

 

 

Time is measurable only in relativity.

Steve can’t remember what it’s like to wear clothes anymore.

Time is measurable only in relativity.

Sometimes Bucky opens the SHIELD weapon stores to clean and maintain every single gun, throwing away the ones that no longer function.

Time is measurable only in relativity.

Steve and Bucky rarely speak anymore. They don’t need to. Everything is silent communication.

Time is measurable only in relativity.

There is nothing relative.

Steve doesn’t have time to register what the noise of the gunshot is before the bullet rips through his head.

  


 

 

 

 

 

He has had a lot of names, but he’s pretty sure “Bucky” was the only one that mattered. And now there’s no one left to speak it.

It’s okay though. Steve is happy now. Or, at least, he’s happier than whatever he would have been if he had finished changing into whatever they'd been becoming.

He makes the noose out of twisted wires. All the cloths and ropes rotted long ago.

When he steps off the bed into thin air, his hands don’t even come up to claw at his neck. He just lets it go. He has a kid from Brooklyn to follow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> As always, you can find me on my [tumblr](http://polyamoryavengers.tumblr.com/) for Marvel headcanons and one-shots.


End file.
